Saturday, January 16, 2016

Montreal Canadiens goalie Ben Scrivens is paying tribute to Lemmy Kilmister with a new mask featuring an image of the late Motorhead legend.

NHL.com reports the mask features a portrait of Kilmister's head inside the ace of spades symbol on one side of the mask, while the other side includes the logo of Canadian rockers Alexisonfire.

"He's a huge influence on not just me, but a lot of the bands that I listen to and a lot of the type of music that I listen to," explains Scrivens. "For me, he's probably the epitome of heavy metal and rock music in terms of not just his music, but his attitude, his persona, his look. He's an ugly guy, he's got a gruff, ugly singing voice. He says what he thinks all the time, he's swearing all the time, and it wasn't an act.

“I think that's the thing that came across from him, nothing was for show. You knew that when he went home and talked to his kid he was probably the exact same way."

"Ben just said we have to do this because I love that guy," says Nash. "All the credit to Ben. It was his idea. I just put his thoughts to paper. I think it came out really nice. Lemmy helps a lot with that cool factor. I guess you put Lemmy on anything and it will be cool."

The mask also has a more subtle tribute to Motorhead on the backplate, where the artist ghosted a representation of the band's logo and Nash put part of the lyrics to "Ace Of Spades" above that logo: "and don't forget the joker."

Motorhead were pleased with the tribute, tweeting, “Thank you for your support and kind gesture.”

The track reached a new all-time peak at No. 13 on the UK singles chart; it originally hit No. 15 upon its release, and last entered the Top 40 22 years ago, hitting Number 23 when it was re-issued in September 1993.